Tag Archives: Olive oil

Terrible Tomato Sauce

 

Food is big big business. The realm of the TV chef is infiltrating our society at every turn, you can switch on the telly any time of day and find a cooking programme, and we lap it up. I for one, rarely miss Saturday Kitchen, I’ve really enjoyed Simon Hopkinson’s recent series and I can’t get enough of Heston. It’s the aspirational nature of the shows, that appeals to me, the dishes I hope to make or the ingredients I want to buy, its promoting a lifestyle as much as its promoting a particular recipe. I think, and I may not be right, that I probably make more dishes I’ve seen on telly then the average man/woman on the street, but I don’t do it that often, maybe once a week. Thats not to say I don’t cook fresh food, I do all the time, but I don’t necessarily do exactly what Delia, the Hairy Bikers or Jamie tell me.

With all the gastronomical delights being beamed into our brains every day, our eating habits should be getting better and better. However, if you listen the Hugh during his big fish fight, Gordon hunting down seasonal produce or Rick Stein lording up the delights of Spanish food heros you’d think that we’d completely lost our way. I also feel that we’re getting worse and a quick glimpse at the supermarket shelves seems to confirm this, with a vast array of frozen meals and pre packaged food.

Firstly I feel what is shown on our TV channels, is exactly what it is supposed to be, good TV, and that’s all. It’s promoting a lifestyle thats fun to watch, but is it achievable for the majority of our society? I say no, its too big a jump to make, why is it too big? Because we are becoming more and more deskilled. We as a society are becoming less and less able to cook food for ourselves, and there is one item on the supermarket shelves that demonstrates this more than any other. It’s not the frozen pizza or the microwave chicken diner, its not the re-heatable lamb pasanda or pre-made lasagne. Its the stir-in tomato and basil sauce, these jars and packets of slimy gloop highlight all that’s bad about supermarket culture. If we can’t make a simple pasta sauce, how can we be expected to whip up James Martin’s latest creation? The solution to this problem, also shows all thats so very good about our favourite Tesco, Asda, Aldi or Waitrose. Supermarkets are great, they are the answer to our deskilled cooking, the offer decent produce at a good price and open the door to easily making our own fresh food.

I hate stir-in tomato and basil sauce because; it tastes horrible, it’s over priced, and a far superior home made version is very easy. Thus, I decided to do a little comparison taking 5 supermarket tomato sauces and making my own, and the results where quite interesting.


I tasted all these sauces and I would describe every one as unpleasent, they don’t taste of tomato, they taste of dried herbs and seasoning. So I’m urging you, next time your in the supermarket reaching for one of theses, or the many other tomatoe sauaces on the shelf, pick up a few simple ingredients and try this cheeper, tastier sauces. You will need

  • 4 table spoons of olive oil (17p)
  • 1 clove of garlic sliced (5p this is generous estimation)
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatos (33p)
  • 1 small packet of basil (65p)
  • Salt and Pepper (1p another estimation)

Thats a total cost of £1.21 for 485 grams of sauce, enough for 4 servings of pasta. All of these ingredients were bought and priced up at my local ASDA, I used the cheepest available, such as a value tin of tomatoes. Most supermarkets will stock theses items at similar prices, this shows that it is more important what you buy not where you buy it, more on that in this very good article.

  1. Heat the olive oil in a frying pan
  2. Add the garlic to the oil, allow the fry until it starts to turn golden
  3. Add the tin of tomatoes, and bring to a gentle boil
  4. Boil for 2 minutes (No more cooking is needed, you want a fresh vibrant tomato taste not a sweet heavily reduced sauce)
  5. Tear or chop up basil and stir into sauce, then season with salt and pepper.
  6. Stir into 5oog of your favourite cooked pasta and serve immediately.
This sauce is also really versatile so you can experiment with it, ad some cooked bacon, or peas or maybe use parsley instead of basil. Its open to invention so try different things if you feel like it. I will guarentee one thing, it will take no more time than it takes to boil the pasta and it will taste better than enything you can get in a jar or packet.

Spanish Bruschetta

I was watching Rick Stein’s Spain last night on BBC 2,  and among the abundance of delights he talked briefly about bread, showing but not talking about a simple Spanish style burschetta. So for breakfast this morning, with a left over cob loaf I baked yesterday, I began making what I hoped would be an excellent morning treat.

The original cob loaf

So I gut a couple of thick slices from the bread and threw them onto a hot griddle pan, I didn’t oil them or the pan I just wanted them to lightly toasted. The pad had to be has hot as I could get it, this helped with making nice criss cross patterns as I rotated the bread through 90 degrees once while cooking.

I nice criss cross starting to show

Once toasted I rubbed thoroughly with half a large tomato, so that the flesh disintegrates and soaks into the bread, then I drizzled on some good olive oil and sprinkled a few flakes of sea salt. I could also have rubed on a clove of garlic but didn’t fancy it this time. This was lovely, a real treat for breakfast and something a bit different. In my opinion some the best food in the world is the simplest, and this is very simple and very good.

The finished article with the remains of the tomato

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Da Piero Restaurant

Da Perio has been around for five years, over in Irby on the Wirral, however recently it has been gaining quite a bit of press attention for its food. I didn’t want to write a full review, due do it not being in Liverpool, but as its only a short drive, I thought I would include it here. I visited with Beatrice for diner a few weeks ago, and realised that not only is this is a trip worth making, it was one I will make again.

Da Perio is classic Italian cooking at its best, it provides high quality ingredients cooked extremely simply, and thats it. It doesn’t add 18 different ingredients to each dish, al a Jamie’s Italian or any of the so called fine dining restaurants in the Liverpool. The chef here knows that a great piece of beef, such as my main of Cotolette della Nonna Emma, is just perfect covered in herbs and bread crumbs and fried in good olive oil.

Stuffed Pepper with Capers

Our other mains and starters showed the same understanding, that simplicity and an understanding of seasoning is the best way to make fine ingredients sing. The beef and prosciutto ravioli in a sage butter, was delicate and tasty, the pepper stuffed with mince (yes you herd me right, the 70’s diner part stalwart) was bursting with flavour and surprisingly light, the accompanying capers were nicer than anything available in the shops. Our sides of red wine broccoli and purgatory beans, were both excellent and the Admiral tuna was perfectly cooked. The deserts we had didn’t quite show the same delicacy of touch, theSemifreddo al cioccolato, which although tasty was very big a quite heavy. The Cannolo Siciliano was fragrant and subtle in flavour but the pastry was a touch hard.

Cannolo Siciliano

You do not get Italian food this good in Liverpool. Thats all I need to say, its better than anything we have to offer, reasonably priced, offers big portions and is a worth a short drive. Just make sure you book, as its very popular.